Follistatin Gene Therapy Doubles Muscle Mass in Mice
Follistatin is an inhibitor of myostatin. Blocking myostatin activity enhances muscle growth, with accompanying beneficial side-effects such as a loss of excess fat tissue. This is well proven. There are a good number of animal lineages (mice, dogs, cows, and so forth) resulting from natural or engineered myostatin loss of function mutations, and even a few well-muscled human individuals with similar mutations. A number of groups are at various stages in the development of therapies to either upregulate follistatin or inhibit myostatin. The latter is further along in the formal regulatory process: human trials have been co...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 18, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Nanopropellers to Deliver Gene Therapy Into Cells
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany have developed powerful nanopropellers that can be steered into the interior of cells to deliver gene therapy. The magnets that these devices, each about the size of a bacteria, are made of were created for the first time for this very task.
Most powerful magnets are either not bio-compatible, lose their properties at small scales, or cannot be manufactured to have very fine details, so cannot be used to manipulate tiny objects from a distance and inside the body. To overcome this, the team created magnets using an iron platinum “L10”...
Source: Medgadget - May 11, 2020 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Medgadget Editors Tags: Genetics Materials Nanomedicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, May 11th 2020
In this study, we found that older nematodes have higher ROS levels. Interestingly, after hydrogen treatment, the ROS levels were significantly decreased, and hydrogen could significantly extend the lifespans of the N2, sod-3 and sod-5 mutant strains, by approximately 22.7%, 9.5%, and 8.7%, respectively.
In addition, aging is regulated by a variety of pathways, such as the insulin signaling pathway, the rapamycin target signaling pathway, and the caloric restriction pathway. However, our results showed that the lifespans of the daf-2 and daf-16 strains, in which these pathways are upregulated, were not affected afte...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 10, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
An Example of a Small Molecule Approach to Telomere Lengthening
Research groups are eyeing telomere lengthening as a way to improve stem cell function. Telomeres are the caps of repeated DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes. A little of their length is lost with each cell division, and cells with very short telomeres become senescent or self-destruct. In the vast majority of cells in the body, this is an important part of the Hayflick limit on cellular replication. Stem cells, however, use telomerase to extend their telomeres.
With age average telomere length is reduced. In most cells, this is just a reflection of the balance between the activity of stem cells, delivering ne...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 4, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 27th 2020
In conclusion, our study demonstrated that Nrf2 deficiency promoted the increasing trend of autophagy during aging in skeletal muscle. Nrf2 deficiency and increasing age may cause excessive autophagy in skeletal muscle, which can be a potential mechanism for the development of sarcopenia.
To What Degree is Chondrocyte Hypertrophy in Osteoarthritis Due to Cellular Senescence?
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/04/to-what-degree-is-chondrocyte-hypertrophy-in-osteoarthritis-due-to-cellular-senescence/
Senescent cells are large. They do not replicate, that function is disabled, but it is as if they go...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 26, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
